How White

On the hills of greasy grass

down the coulees to the land

across the river,

where the people waited

to be left alone, waited

for the past to return—

they came.

Hundreds shouting, shooting,

water splashing beneath steel hooves,

smoke rising into the blue sky,

fear rising, men mounting,

the battle joined, led.

Across the river,

up the coulees to the hills of greasy grass,

they rode to fight, to kill, to win.

In the late day, in the still air,

the women moved among the dead

to cut off their hope for the next world

cleaning their ears so they could hear the people better.

“Oh, see,” the old doctor said later, scanning the

cold, bloody field, at the defeated,

at the pieces left there,

at the bodies piled against each other: “How white they are, how white.”

Previously published in THE RUBICON by J.B. Hogan